Research strategies

Counselling academics, whether research active or in teaching only positions, will still need to publish research and/or scholarhip, to enhance promotion opportunities. 

Team up

• Join the counselling researcher community of practice is independant from institutions and associations, and is made up of counselling researchers, academics, practitioners, and students. Its aim is to support the development of counselling research in Australia. For more information, see here.

• Join or form research teams. These can bring a diversity of knowledge and skills, enables internal peer reviews, and enables tasks to be divvied up. It can also increase the volume of publications. It may take an individual one year to research and publish an article, or an individual with a team of five, might be able to produce five articles per year, with each person on the team leading one article each.

• Late and mid career researchers to mentor early career researchers (ECRs). This enables the ECRs to learn from the experience of the more experienced scholars. 

Complete doctorates

• Possessing a doctorate is often the only path to promotion to Senior Lecturer and above. This site has resources on pathways into doctorates.

Increase research opportunities

• Take on research supervision students. Whether this be in a research subject in a course work course, or as part of a higher degree course.

Increase volume of publications

• Develop a research plan for a five year period, with publication targets and if possible, research students and funding to help resource it. 

• Aim for a minimum number of publications a year. 

• Ensure the publications will be recognised by your institution. Normally publishing in Q1 and Q2 journals (see Scimago site) are required by Australian universities, while colleges may be less concerned where published. If you are in a college but hope to be employed in a university in the future, aim for higher ranked journals where appropriate. There is a listing of journals on the NHCPE of relevance to counselling, including their ranking. 

• Work in research teams. If each person on a team of three committs to leading two papers per year, this will convert into six publications for the team.

• Actively encourage your higher performing research students to publish.  

Increase volume of citations

• Choose research topics that are likely to attract citations. Although your interests may lie in more niche areas, ensure you are part of 'higher value' projects from a citation perspective. 

• Identify and publish in high impact journals.  To identify these, go to https://www.scimagojr.com/ and search for your journal. Q1 have the highest impact and Q4 has the lowest impact. 

• Use preprints.  Preprints are versions of articles that can be publically made available via a preprint server, prior to the publication of the article. This allows for feedback, allow for other researchers to access your results earlier, and enhance visibility of your research.  For more information, see here. 

• Publish as open access when able. Open access means that your articles can be accessed by anyone rather than being locked behind firewalls that require subscriptions or pay per view, or membership in an institution that provides access.  Open access often does have charges for authors, and some of these can be quite expensive. However some open access journals are free to publish in (e.g. PACJA, ACRJ), and some institutions may have arrangements made with some publishers that enable authors to publish in some open access journals no cost.

• Beware of predatory journals. Only use legitimate ranked or well known journals.

• Use software such as Publish or Perish on Microsoft Windows (harzing.com) (freeware) to help assist in decision making in selecting journals. 

• Cite other Australian counselling researchers whereever appropriate. Also cite Australian and international counselling journals. Helping all counselling researchers gain citations will help promote their research visbility, their reputations, and the counselling research profile more generally. 

Promote research and researcher awareness

• Create free researcher accounts for your researcher profile on ORCID, and Google Scholar. Other options include ResearchGate, Academia.edu. 

• Upload your research citations or papers into your institution's ePrints repository.

• Share your work via X, LinkedIn, and other forms of social media. 

• Share your research on relevant communities such as Reddit sites that may focus on similar topics as yours.

Research lecturers and supervisors to encourage students to convert theses into publications, and publish them in Australian counselling journals. This will enable counselling student experience at preparing for publication, increase outputs for academics, and increase volume of counselling research received by the journals.

Aim to publish at least one article a year in an Australian counselling journal. This will help increase your visibility as a researcher to the Australian counselling community as well as helping meaningfully contribute to strengthening the Australian outlets.

Academics and journal editors can check higher education institution libraries to see if the Australian journals are indexed in the databases. If not, request the librarian to add.

Some other options that might be considered by the profession and existing counselling journals:

• Collapse both Australian journals into one, to reduce costs, to funnel more articles into one (which are currently diffused across two journals).

• Start another dedicated research journal.

• Remove all journals and pool resources to support an existing internation counselling journal. 

• Ensure existing journals are indexed so that the articles are easier to find.

• Encourage students who have completed successful theses, to convert into peer reviewed publications. Peer reviewed publications may help enhance opportunities for entry into PhD studies, as they show a publishing track record.

• Advertise student and alumni publications on student noticeboards, so students can see that counselling students can successfully publish.

• Encourage academic staff to reach out to students who are academically talented, and see if they have interest in pursueing doctoral studies.

• Encourage staff who have not enrolled or completed a PhD to consider undertaking one. 

• Check if the staff institution has supports for staff to undertake PhD studies. If not, advocate for a reduced workload over the study period.

• Aim to ensure your Master of Counselling degree taught at your institution has a significant sized research project option as part of it, for those students who may be interested in further studies.

• Inform students of the various scholarship opportunities for students undertaking PhDs.

• Encourage students to join the research community of practice to start socialising with other interested counselling researchers.

Ensure accredited training provides training in research for students to gain sufficient research literacy.

Ensure Bachelor and Masters students are required to do a research methodology subject. 

Provide all Bachelor and Masters students an opportunity to undertake a research project, at least as available options.

Assign a staff member to be responsible for heading research in the counselling discipline. The person should have a strong interest in research and be an advocate for it. This person can help strategically support research productivity, promoting research and a supportive research culture, and supporting staff and students in research. 

Develop or support counselling research conferences, or research streams within counselling conferences

Providing information via the NHCPE website to support research

Providing encouragement and support for cross-institutional research collaborations

NHCPE to host a hub of available HDR supervisors, their expertise, and their projects, to enable student / supervisor matching 

Both peak bodies to have a research committee or equivalent.

Both peak bodies ensure training standards sufficiently support robust research literacy for students and research productivity expectations for institutions that have accredited training courses. They also include expectations that incentivise doctoral attainment for counselling academic staff and members of the profession. 

Both peak bodies require at least one article per year be submitted, from at least one counselling educator from each accredited training provider, in an Australian counselling journal as part of the accreditation obligations. 

Both peak bodies ensure there is at least a research stream in each conference they hold.

Both peak bodies provide funding for counselling research projects and scholarships.

Both peak bodies continue supporting at least one counselling Australian peer reviewed counselling journal.

Prepare educational resources on research for key stakeholders. These include counselling education staff, researchers, and students.   

Identify and publish key research topics that are topical, might bring impact, and may assist the individual researchers and/or the profession as a whole.

Advise peak bodies accreditation standards to ensure research is effectively supported in education of counsellors.

Identify and distribute external funding opportunities for counselling researchers.